Free roof tarps available for homes with damaged roofs

If you live in Charlotte, Collier, Hillsborough, Lee, Manatee, Miami-Dade, Monroe, Pinellas and Sarasota counties and have roof damage, you can go right now and sign up for a blue tarp.

It's part of "Operation Blue Roof." Engineers from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will come and put the tarp on your house.

People showing up say this makes a bad situation a little better.

Applicants were signing up today in Largo at the Outreach Center, 12875 Walsingham Road.

"We figured the centers will be here for at least a week, If not longer and we're working on getting more are ROE Centers opened up in the different communities that qualify for this," said Joe Durkee, emergency operations specialist.

Homeowners must sign a Right of Entry (ROE) form to allow government employees and contractors onto their property to assess damage and install the temporary covering. ROE collection centers will be set up by Corps teams in convenient neighborhood locations. Updated information about collection center locations in each county will be distributed daily.